Harper government to ban costly rule-making by public servants, says Tony Clement

OTTAWA – The Harper government has given Parliament notice it plans to table legislation Wednesday that would prohibit public servants from creating unnecessary rules and red tape that cost businesses money.

Treasury Board President Tony Clement explained Tuesday that the soon-to-be introduced bill would formalize an existing policy – the one-for-one rule – that the government has been testing for more than a year.

It requires public servants to eliminate regulations, whenever they propose new ones.

“It’s about changing culture in this town,” Clement said at a news conference with three other federal cabinet ministers who were touting federal efforts to reduce red tape. “I tell this story about (when) an issue comes up, and people start lighting their hair on fire trying to figure out how to solve the issue and the go-to solution too typically and too often is: Let’s do a regulation.”

Clement, who received praise from the Canadian Federation of Independent Businesses at the news conference for the government’s red-tape reduction efforts, said that the existing one-for-one rule shouldn’t apply to regulations on health or safety issues, such as recent federal efforts to improve railway safety. Instead, he said it should require public servants to estimate the financial costs and hours of work that other regulations impose on businesses, and ensure that new rules don’t increase those costs.

“This has got to be systemic change. Not just because Tony Clement wants it or (International Trade Minister) Ed Fast wants it,” said Clement, standing with Fast, Revenue Minister Kerry-Lynne Findlay and Small Businesses and Tourism Minister Maxime Bernier. “It has to be part of the way people think.”

He added that the government successfully tested its one-for-one rule over the past year, leading up to the legislation, entitled An Act to control the administrative burdens that regulations impose on businesses.

He also said that the existing government policies on regulations allow for public consultation before any new rule is introduced or abolished.

“I wanted to get all the kinks out of it and road test it before we went forward with legislation,” Clement said. “We now have some very qualitative and quantitative measurements of how the one-for-one rule has worked and now we’re ready proceed with legislation.